This is odious, and it's just one of the things in just this article. The amount of human rights violations going on seems staggering.
This is odious, and it's just one of the things in just this article. The amount of human rights violations going on seems staggering.
That's US' image worldwide too, or was. Except in the Muslim world where their atrocities were observed and reported firsthand. Wikileaks blew open that made-up image in a big way. Reminds me of:
"One of the artifices of devil is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist." -Charles Baudelaire.
The quote is best known in the modern day in the form it took in The Usual Suspects: "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist".
Baudelaire did write the same thing, but it's not original to him either, making him an odd citation. In particular, the form you quote didn't come from Baudelaire; it came from John Wilkinson.
Wilkinson (1836): "One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist"
Baudelaire (1864): "la plus belle des ruses du Diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas!" ["the loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist!"]
Also, the escalating violent struggle is making someone some serious money. So the monetary incentives are just as strong too whatever the overt justification may be.
People arguing for this certainly aren't looking outside the box. Always check if they have a connection to the security industry and be prepared for a lot of bullshit reasoning.
back in 2001 the US just experienced 9/11. the sense of anger and retribution was shared internationally. people were arguing for dropping A-bombs all over the middle east.
Speaking from South America, I can asure you that the general opinion of 9/11 was that the US had asked for it and that there are only so many countries you could bomb for oil before one of them decides to fight back.
Sure, our government sent a statement of solidarity and no one was happy that it happened. But I am having a hard time thinking of someone other than the US who was truly, angrily calling for retribution.
It was clear, I mean crystal clear even to US commentators on places like CNN on that very day that this will be used as carte blanche for government to instill control, surveillance and fear among US general population, and basically get away with anything because 'terrorists'. Well, they for sure were right.
Life of Manhattan-based bureaucrat is not worth to me more than some poor civilian blown to pieces on some wedding or tending his field half around the world. You know, equality of human beings and stuff. 3000 means nothing compared to millions, in fact tens of millions if we keep counting.
MANY of us in the US absolutely opposed what was happening. We were horrified by the way the US reacted, and the shit it did. It's just that, as a US citizen, we really don't have any power to affect how the government acts.
I can only think of two times when I was VERY angry with the US, post 9/11 and the way our government reacted to the post George Floyd movement. I saw a video where we had tanks rolling down the street with armed men behind it yelling "get in your house". You then hear one of them yell "light 'em up!" and they start firing rubber bullets at these people who were standing on their BALCONY filming this. These people had no idea the ones yelling were even yelling at them. The very idea that all of the elements of tianmen square was there in the US just boils my blood. And then to see so many video's of police officers TARGETTING media or attacking people with impunity.
Even the death of the officers in Tulsa, OK. The lawyer released an affidavit stating that he had watched the police cams and the police were basically beating the shit out of the guy before he finally reached into this car and pulled out the gun. The affidavit stated that the police lied about several aspects of what happened, most specifically that the shooter never stood over them after the fact and shot multiple times into the downed officers, but that instead the shooter was panic'd and started running away (backwards) when one of the officers tried to pull out his gun and the shooter then fired again at that police officer.
I've said more than I should have, but I'm both extremely angry about this stuff and immensely disappointed that my country isn't better than it is.
I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but there was a bit of schadenfreude along with the horror and sympathy.
I googled one of the examples given. This seems to be the most substantial reporting: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/the-newest...
> In June 2016, Mr. Kareem was at the location of four different aerial attacks. The first and fourth incidents involved strikes to the OGN office in Idlib City when Mr. Kareem was inside the office. The second attack occurred in the town of Hariyataan while Mr. Kareem was there conducting an interview. The strike hit the exact location where Mr. Kareem was setting up for the interview, but at the time of the strike he had climbed a nearby hill to “view destroyed homes a street away.”
> The third attack occurred when the vehicle in which Mr. Kareem and his staff were traveling was “struck and destroyed by a drone-launched Hellfire missile.” At the time of the strike, Mr. Kareem was sitting in a different, nearby vehicle which was “hurled into the air by the force of the blast” and “flipped upside down.” In August 2016, Mr. Kareem was again the victim of an attack when he was at the Kulliyatul Midfa‘iyyah (Artillery College) to film. He and his coworkers were in his car “when there was a huge blast only yards away from the car.” The occupants survived, but all were hit by shrapnel from the blast.
> As a result of these five near-miss experiences in a three-month period, Mr. Kareem alleges upon information and belief that he was the target and that his name is included on the United States Kill List.
I can see why he might think he's on a "kill list", but at the same time, maybe the people he was meeting were the targets?
It sucks we even need to ask this question, but the OP's link makes it sound like all of this is simple fact. As an outsider, I don't think it's possible to come to an actual concrete conclusion here, which is basically what all the courts have said.
I would trust Mr Kareem over the US government on this because it fits the pattern of how the drone wars work.
For a good source on this issue I would recommend:
The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program by Jeremy Scahill
or the Drone Papers from the intercept which were the basis for the book.
>"The White House and Pentagon boast that the targeted killing program is precise and that civilian deaths are minimal. However, documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse."
https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp...
During the last administration. Interesting.
[0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-kill... [1]: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civili... [3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/tr...
Which part of that makes their behaviour ok?